iOS App of the Day: Carat

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (until Apple works it out)… having an iPhone is like being in an everlasting love/hate relationship. You love your iPhone, like in a crazy, obsessive, can’t live a day without it of love, but you hate your battery life. Ever since the release of iOS 5, iPhone users as a whole have generally suffered from serious battery drain. Up until recently the only solution is being tied to your charger. While there are some apps out there that aim at solving your battery woes, there is a new app called Carat that takes a unique approach to the problem. As an alternative, Carat provides recommendations customized to your device by collecting usage samples and logs whenever you decide to fire the app up. Essentially, Carat collects data from a multitude of areas on your iPhone’s hardware, sends it to their servers, analyzes the data, and subsequently hits you back with suggestions on how you can improve your battery life.

Pros:

  • Action List telling you how to improve your battery life and by how much
  • Device information detailing exactly what data we are recording
  • Reports apps that are using lots of energy and whether that is happening on other devices, too
  • Detail views let you dive down into the data and see graphs of energy use
  • Low-overhead sampling requires almost no energy or CPU
  • J-Score tells you how your battery efficiency compares to other users
  • Sharing features let you post/tweet/blog about your experience; more users means more data which means better recommendations for you

Cons:

  • Have to agree to data collection before downloading the app (some users may be scared off by the lengthy terms)
  • The app does take a few days to collect data and report back

How it works:

  • Download the app
  • Read and agree to app’s terms and data collection agreement
  • Wait a few days for the app to collect and analyze your phone usage
  • Tap on Actions to read a list of how to make your battery last longer and how much improvement to expect
  • Tap on My Device to read your J-Score (first time users will have to wait for app’s first report)
  • J-Score represents the percentile battery life you see relative to all other devices being measured by Carat. Example: if your J-Score is 50 you have an expected battery life better than half of Carat users.
  • Hog Report shows you what apps that are correlated with higher energy use across many devices. Closing hogs may improve battery life.
  • Bug Report shows you what apps use the most amount of energy on a small number of devices, including yours. Restarting buggy apps may improve battery life.

Conclusion:

I started using Carat a few days ago and have already received my first report and I was floored with how well this app delivers.  Carat works around reporting “bugs and hogs”. Bugs are apps that may not necessarily use an overwhelming amount of battery life, but may be malfunctioning (like starting your GPS again and again) and result in a drain on your battery. Carat suggests that you restart the buggy apps  and reports these issues back to the developer, which in theory should help improve the end consumer result. Hogs are what you would expect. Apps that stream music and run all day long in the background are prime Hog targets. With Carat you are kindly reminded to kill the Hogs which could give you a few extra hours of battery life in one day. Just enough to keep your phone on through that boring train commute on the way home. The best part of Carat is that the app itself consumes very little battery power and the longer you use it the better your customized suggestions will be. If you’re like me and tired of being tethered to your USB charger, then download Carat and tell your friends about it. The more people who use and love Carat the brighter our future looks for a world where “10% battery life” is simply a thing of the past.

Carat is available for free in the iTunes Store. Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.Requires iOS 4.3 or later. iTunes Link

This is part of our iOS App of the Day series. We take our favorite app for iOS for each day and post it here for you to check out. Feel free to check out all of our App of the Day posts here.

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